


You Are Me (But Better)

by BC_Brynn



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Age Regression/De-Aging, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, BAMF Harley, Humor, M/M, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Seriously This Is Just one Long Snarkfest, Teenage Tony, With Stealth Plot, all the snark, flangst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-07
Updated: 2018-10-07
Packaged: 2019-07-27 19:57:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,995
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16226252
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BC_Brynn/pseuds/BC_Brynn
Summary: Tony is missing. None of the responsible people are doing anything to find him, so the rescue is up to Harley.The Tony he finds is somehow seventeen. It’s a feature, not a bug.





	You Are Me (But Better)

**Author's Note:**

> Seventeen-year-old Tony is an insecure drama queen, but he’s my baby. Harley concurs.
> 
> I don’t even know where I got this pairing – I don’t think I’ve ever read anything for them, or seen any fanart – but it just appeared out of the murky depths of my mind and wouldn’t leave me the hell alone. I had to write something for them. And then they wouldn’t shut up for long enough to get anything done.
> 
> Goddamnit, I ship this so hard. These two defensive assholes totally sucker-punched me.
> 
> (detailed warnings are in the end note)

“Friday?” Tony demanded. What was the point of hunkering down in a fortress if somebody could just waltz in, in the middle of the night no less?

“Your visitor has used an emergency code issued by yourself, Boss. He’s got conditional access.”

“Yeah, the mirror and the calendar tell me that conditions have been met.” Tony guessed that for other people this constituted an emergency.

For him the initial crisis was well and done with, and he was beginning to feel comfortable in his surroundings. About ninety-five percent of that contentment was thanks to his A.I. – his _strong A.I._ – which was the best thing about being in the future. And, also, incidentally, proof positive that Tony was _right_ and every single person who ever rolled their eyes at his ideas was _full of shit_.

Being richer than god helped, certainly. But without Friday he wouldn’t have gotten as far as fast.

“Hey, stranger,” he said – directly to his visitor. At some point in the past thirty years he had wired the whole mansion with everything an A.I. needed to effectively use the building as her body. That included speakers everywhere.

Yes, _everywhere_. Boy, had he been startled the first time he had asked a rhetorical question while sitting on the can.

“Did you seriously model your newest A.I. after yourself?” asked the stranger.

That was a very interesting assumption. Huh. Someone apparently recognized Tony’s voice, but also heard there was something off with it. And instead of tossing out an open-ended question like ‘are you alright?’ or ‘what happened?’ the way most of the humanity would, he had skipped ahead and formulated a hypothesis. Occam’s razor failed him this time, but solid A for engaging his brain.

“Interesting project proposal, but right now I’m too busy with the Philosopher’s Stone. Why don’t you grab the pizza box by the door and make tracks upstairs, Cupcake?”

There was silence instead of a response.

Tony pouted. He instructed Friday to open the feed on his screen, and saw the tail-end of what looked like his visitor getting ready for battle. Something must have triggered the transformation from a concerned acquaintance to James Bond, because that was a gun in the guy’s hand, and the other hand was encased in what looked like a poor man’s version of an Iron Man repulsor gauntlet.

“Guess that means he’s not bringing the pizza, huh?” quipped Tony. He popped open another can of coke and kicked his feet up onto the desk next to his keyboard. He wriggled his toes. Old-him had the weirdest fucking taste in funny socks. But, sure, _Hulk Smash!_ – totally.

Good on him for not turning into a fucking stick in the mud in his old age. Iron Fucking Man, living in a skyscraper in Manhattan, kicking aliens’ asses, wearing funny socks and creating A.I.s. He was the best.

Honestly, it had never ever occurred to Tony that he might one day look back at what he had done with his life and find something _good_. It was so fucking weird. Surreal. Like, he was that kid that was too smart for anyone’s good, too mouthy for _his own_ good, and already a high-functioning alcoholic at the ripe age of seventeen.

Just the idea that he _could_ become this guy… it made him _wanna_.

Maybe with less Captain America bullshit involved than the first time around, but he did dig the red-and-gold aesthetic.

Quiet footsteps sounded from the hallway, coming gradually closer. The ajar door behind Tony opened wide, letting in a cold draft.

“Hands where I can see them,” Cupcake ordered, raising the gun.

Tony laced his fingers together behind his head, making it look like a natural part of stretching. He kicked off the desk with one socked foot and swiveled to face his visitor. He couldn’t help smirking when they finally came face-to-face.

Cupcake stared at him over the muzzle of his peashooter for solid twenty seconds, before he put the gun down and holstered it.

Tony followed the movement, noting the ratty jeans that nonetheless made the guy look like a million bucks, and a dark blue hoodie unzipped just enough to show off a triangle of a printed t-shirt. Also, his manbun game was mediocre – just the top half of his hair gathered back – but Tony got the feeling it was more about not having hair in his eyes if he needed to shoot someone than a fashion statement.

“You’ve been here the whole two weeks?” Cupcake asked.

“More or less.” Tony shrugged. “Fell into passionate lust with the internet. Want to have its babies-”

“Isn’t that what Friday is?”

“Boss?” interjected Friday. “You told me you didn’t know who my daddy was?”

“Mutiny!” Tony grumbled. It was hard to keep his face straight. “See if I-”

“Why the hell are you still ‘missing’?” snapped Cupcake.

Tony actually wondered that, too. He had asked Friday not to rat him out to anybody after he realized _who_ Friday was – and dealt with the resulting science boner – but he was getting food delivered here, and it should have been at least a little suspicious to _someone_ that someone was living at the empty Park Ave mansion.

Tony’s apparent CEO ex-girlfriend – hot, for an older woman – had looked appropriately crushed on camera, and Friday told him she wasn’t putting on an act, but Tony had grown up with Howard and Obie. He knew how the press circuit worked _and_ how to work it.

“Don’t you have any friends?”

“I’ve got at least two,” Tony admitted, flabbergasted about how that happened.

There was a _Peter_ on his phone, who was like a textbook nervous nerd, and babbled even more than Tony at his most caffeinated, except that he was also apparently a superhero, and evidence pointed to him being too good and nice and brave and self-sacrificing for this world.

Tony in general wasn’t the type to worry about desecrating things, but freshly fallen snow in the Himalayas was less pure than Peter and, apparently, he still had some vestigial shriveled conscience squirreled somewhere Howard couldn’t find it.

He had zero clue how he could have ended up being friends with someone like that.

And now there was Cupcake himself.

“That’s pathetic,” deadpanned Mr Critical.

“That’s embarrassment of riches, Cupcake,” Tony retorted.

He hadn’t spoken to Rhodey in almost a month before his time-skip (or whatever it was, but time-skip sounded good enough for the time being), and he honestly wasn’t sure if Rhodey was pissed at him and they were taking a friendship-break, or if the cup of patience hath overfloweth and Rhodey was _done_ with him (and, alright, apparently they were superhero buddies in the future, so platypus must have forgiven him at least a little, but he still had no clue what had happened).

Two friends – actual friends, who sought him out because they were worried about him, one of whom was prepared to jump into literal fire and the other of whom had travelled two hundred miles (according to the tag dangling from his backpack grab handle) to get here with no clue what he would find…

Tony didn’t even know what to do with that. “Lighten up. You had to see something in my pathetic ass to come bail me out.”

Ah, shit. That was probably too honest. He hadn’t meant to put his _friend_ on the spot like that. He got how this worked; they were guys, and guys were tough, and didn’t discuss their feelings. And if they absolutely had to, all discussion was done with as much sarcasm as possible.

“You were supposed to meet me,” Cupcake tossed out, and then went freakishly intense. “You don’t break your word.”

“That’s new,” Tony returned, but he could feel the intensity of that expectation make something in his chest rise. Something like the determination not to disappoint – it was horrible. He already felt stretched too thin just struggling to not look away from that thousand-watt gaze.

Cupcake scoffed. “Front all you want, _Mechanic_. You didn’t give me a set of emergency codes because you thought you’d blow me off once you got bored with that stupid kid from Middle of Nowhere, Tennessee.”

Tony opened his mouth, but was bowled over with appalling ease.

“You didn’t respond to a safety phrase,” Cupcake accused.

That force of personality was staggering.

Tony had never met anyone like that. “You’re hot. Can I sit on your cock?”

Cupcake didn’t choke or sputter, almost disappointingly. He did momentarily stop breathing, and his eyes went very wide (pretty eyes, fuck, Tony was deep in trouble here). Then he screwed up his face in a grimace of disgust. “You’re one foot in the grave, creep, that’s seriously gross!”

Tony laughed.

Cupcake theatrically shuddered, and then his (pretty) eyes narrowed. “What’s the last thing you remember before you woke up in this millennium?”

Tony was the one who choked. On his laughter. He leant back in the chair – it gave just enough for him to still be able to look at his _friend_ when he craned his neck – and realized that maybe Aunt Peg had a point when she told him he was as much of a narcissist as Howard.

Tony had a definite type: brilliant assholes.

“Are you always ten steps ahead of everyone?” he prevaricated. It wasn’t like the answer wasn’t obvious.

Cupcake shrugged. His mouth did something that could be only described as a smug pout. “Not always. Sometimes I’m around you.”

Damn. It was a _mutual_ admiration society. Tony gave them thirty minutes before they started pulling clothes off. Thirty _tops_.

He spun around on the chair. Hopefully that looked like casual fidgeting, not like he was trying to hide his thought-process. He didn’t want anyone to spook; that would result in postponement of the happy times, and then he’d be sad. Tony couldn’t afford to be sad. He didn’t have the emotional capacity at the moment.

Cupcake took a seat on the least cluttered end of the workbench, and started manually undoing the clasps of his gauntlet. That was a little disappointingly low-tech, but some of that was made up by style. The power source casing seemed to be a plastic watch with the picture of Wile E. Coyote.

“And then you do shit like leave the food by the front door,” Tony complained, spinning around again, “when you could have brought it up on the way. That’s criminally inefficient.”

Cupcake narrowed his eyes, glaring upwards – obviously used to doing it behind the curtain of his bangs, which were currently trapped in his tiny little man _nub_. It wasn’t even a _bun_. He didn’t mention that his hands had been full when he came up, which Tony expected him to do. “What do you have all the bots for? Send one of them to pick up your dinner.”

Tony missed DUM-E, but Friday was keeping an eye on him. And, apparently, on DUM-E’s menagerie of younger siblings, who weren’t yet a twinkle in Tony’s eye, but who were all absolutely _rad_. Tony had video-called them, and they were even more dope than he had expected.

They totally would have fetched pizza. If they were within wheeling distance.

“You see any bots around here, _Hawkeye_?”

“Bite your tongue,” Cupcake snapped.

Oh, right. One of the rogue Avengers was called that, too. Tony finished his coke, crumpled the can, and threw it across the study-slash-workshop into the bin. “I was thinking Cooper, but do we hate _Hawkeye_?”

Cupcake pursed his mouth. “Do we look like we’ve got the time and energy to hate on pondscum?”

Tony had seriously never been attracted to anyone this strongly. It was like a tidal wave of desire, only it _burnt_ , so maybe wave wasn’t the best metaphor. He should go for something with plasma. Plasma sounded pretty metaphorical to him.

“At least get an armor here. You’re a sitting duck.” Cupcake finally pulled off the gauntlet, snaps jingling, and revealed a glove underneath, made of some dark grey material that looked like silk but unlike silk also stretched. “Between the two of us it will take a day at the most to adapt it for the scrawny you-”

“Hey!”

“Face it,” Cupcake cut him another ego-popping glance, “you buffed up in your old age. Right now you’re a talking noodle.”

Tony took that personally. He had been studying, and inventing, and he didn’t have time to sleep and eat – where would he have found a couple hours in a day to waste on sit-ups and pull-ups and whatever other ups the gym guys lived for? “I’ve got better things to do than drink steroid shakes and pump iron. I’m building the future here-”

“You’ve already built the future.”

“I’m going to build _more_ future-”

Cupcake grinned, just a quick helpless one before he squashed it away, but it couldn’t be more obvious that he _liked_ Tony, and this Mr Negativity person was actually a defensive public mask. The guy had layers. Some of those layers had spikes like a cactus, but Tony perceived that as a clear challenge.

“-and I’m definitely _not_ going to do it on an empty stomach.” With twin tortured groans (from him and from the ancient swivel chair), Tony pulled himself upright and to his feet. He raised his arms above his head, clasped his hands together and pushed his chest forward until his spine popped.

A quick glance confirmed that Cupcake did pay special attention to the lines of Tony’s artfully displayed body, so the final nail in the coffin of frosty rejection got hammered in with prejudice. Or _without_ , as the case may have been. The twenty-tens were a lot less closeted than the eighties, or so said the internet.

“I’m going to get the pizza,” Tony announced, pretending that it wasn’t a concession. He was too hungry to waste time arguing with Cupcake, when he already knew without a smidgeon of doubt, that the guy would _not_ fetch on order. “You make yourself comfortable, and try to think of an incentive for me to share.” He grinned. “Friday, lock down the computers.”

“Got it, Boss,” confirmed the A.I., and Tony set out through the darkened but still familiar hallways of the Park Avenue mansion toward the main entrance, where the delivery boy had left his pizza to go cold on the doorstep. Granted, Tony had put that in the instructions (you could place your orders online! Tony _loved_ the internet). He had expected that he would be faster picking it up, only Cupcake threw a wrench into those proceedings by showing up armed to his teeth.

When he got back to his lair, Cupcake had ditched the hoodie and the hairstyle. Tony usually hated muppets, but this guy made it work for him. Also, he had drained one coke can and was halfway through a second one.

Tony would have to replenish his stores.

“Invest in a microwave,” Cupcake commanded in between gulps of caffeine and sugar. Apparently Tony’s jerry-rigged spiral immersion heater (necessary for boiling water for coffee and ramen) wasn’t good enough for him.

“You want one, build one,” Tony retorted, pointing over his shoulder to the rest of the workshop. It used to be a study, but he had no use for a row of bookcases filled with books chosen for their pretty leather bindings, and could think of only one use for the giant mahogany table (which had not even been viable until Cupcake made his entrance). So he had gutted the room and put in furniture that made sense instead.

The only paper book he had allowed in was his copy of _The Moon is a Harsh Mistress_ – the actual copy that he remembered from before the time-skip. He had found it in his bedroom. He would have expected old-him to take it with him when he moved out, but he could respect himself for going fully digital instead.

“Maybe tomorrow,” decided Cupcake. And yawned. Pointedly.

It wasn’t that late – Tony checked the computer screen – okay, maybe it was that late, but why didn’t the guy sleep on the bus? Bus rides were supposed to be long and boring. Or had movies lied to Tony?

“Most of the house-”

“ _House_ ,” Cupcake drawled mockingly.

“-isn’t ready for habitation. So sorry, but we’re going to have to share a room.” Tony smiled, that one smile Ana said made him look like butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth. No reason it should melt, anyway; he wasn’t lying.

Nearly everything aside from the bedroom-bathroom-study combo he was using was still under dust covers. And he wasn’t going to start sorting out the laundry at half one in the morning, so there were no spare bed linens. That was what happened when guests didn’t _call_ beforehand.

Cupcake rolled his eyes. “Right. And there’s just _one_ bed.”

“What would I need two beds for in my bedroom?” Tony pointed out very logically.

Cupcake remained unimpressed. “Where have I read this cliché before? At least you’ve got heating.”

That was uncalled for. So Tony was in the mood for a little slap and a tickle – which teenage guy wasn’t? It was part of the teen experience. But that didn’t mean he was going to push it, and he absolutely didn’t have to resort to devising elaborate traps for strangers to get some sugar.

“You know the way out,” he announced with the jerk of his chin toward the door. “New York’s full of hotels-”

“Because I’m a trust fund baby that can totally afford that. Why do you think I took _the bus_ here.”

“Ugh.” _Buses_. Seriously, even the word sounded like filth and boredom and too many people breathing the same air. Nothing like the knowledge that your next inhale has already repeatedly passed through fifty other lungs. Did buses seat fifty people? Tony wasn’t sure. “Fine, have a pity invitation to my bed-”

“On top of the previous invitations?” bitched Cupcake.

“Did I traumatize you?” Tony didn’t think so, not after Cupcake had unabashedly checked him out, but there probably was some dissociative weirdness from Cupcake knowing the fifty-year-old him (give or take a couple of years). Tony remembered how grossed out he had been when the Math Analysis prof had sleazed up to him, and that guy probably hadn’t been over forty.

On the other hand, Tony had been fourteen. So maybe it would be different now-

“What?” Cupcake glared through his bangs (exactly like Tony had imagined he would). “By hitting on me?”

“Then what-”

“I didn’t come here for a booty call.” Cupcake sort of sounded really angry under that disaffected glumness. “I thought you were, like, _dead_.”

Oh. Right.

Tony shrugged. “That guy you knew probably is.”

“You _are_ that guy, dumbbell!” Cupcake kicked the door open and crossed the hallway to the door opposite, which he correctly identified as Tony’s bedroom.

Friday turned the light on for him; he didn’t even pause on the threshold to take in the glory that was Tony’s living space, and went straight to rearranging stuff. He replaced a stack of graphic design notebooks (from the eighties) from the table to a carpeted corner where they would be out of the way, and cleared the other flotsam by dumping it on top of Tony’s discarded clothes.

He set his backpack on top of the newly emerged space and delved in, back turned to Tony like it was some kind of a statement.

Or emphasis on his last verbal statement? That Tony was Cupcake’s whatever (mentor? probably not sugar daddy?). Yes, Tony was, kinda, but also no. _Mostly_ no.

“Ugh.” He rubbed his forehead. “Too philosophical. Face it, there’s no button you can click to magically re-do three decades of my life. I’ve already been here for two weeks – whatever future history of mine existed, it’s overwritten.”

“Life’s not Microsoft Fucking Excel,” Cupcake snapped. He reached up to grab a fistful of his ridiculous hair and tugged. Oddly, that helped him rein in the anger and go back to the previous snarky jadedness. “You’re sure you’re not a failed clone?”

“I feel like I’m missing references. I hate it when that happens. Microsoft’s still kicking? Good on those guys. Go, Silicon Valley.” Tony plopped down on the bed, set the pizza box next to him and opened it. The cheese was a congealed mass, but otherwise it looked mostly edible (though, yes, this was coming from someone who had drunk molded coffee and not noticed until his classmate pointed it out – in Tony’s defense, it was the finals week and it was _coffee_ ).

He ripped out a slice and took a bite. It tasted better than it looked. That, or he was hungrier than he thought. As he chewed, a horrible thought occurred to him. “Fuck, I’ve got three decades of pop culture to catch up on, don’t I?”

“Poor you,” Cupcake commented unsympathetically, landed hard on the mattress on the opposite side of the box from Tony and stole a piece of pizza without asking (which shouldn’t have been charming). “Having to watch Star Gate again. What a terrible burden.” Then he was on his feet and walking out of the room.

“Um, are you leaving? That was fast.” Tony’s thought process, which had been rushing along the track of the awesomeness of _future_ sci-fi, derailed and crashed. He had assumed – hoped… oh. Never mind, then. “If you need cash-”

Cupcake turned in the doorway, rolled his eyes very hard and shook the cellphone he was holding to bring it to attention. “Gotta call Mom, asshole. I dropped her an email, but she’ll probably like knowing I didn’t get myself offed saving your suddenly jailbait ass.”

“Right.” Tony tried to come up with a quip, something along the lines of him ‘being the jailbait cradle robber now?’ and how Cupcake couldn’t have it both ways, but his throat refused to work after the initial croak.

Tony wanted to call his Mom, too. Only, you know, she was _dead_. Fucking _murdered_ apparently, and Friday had tried to break it to him _gently_ , like that was even possible. Sure, when he figured out he was in the year twenty-fucking-seventeen, Tony didn’t expect that Howard would still be kicking. He would have been _hundred_. With the way he drank and went into flights of rages at the drop of a dime, it was a miracle he lived to _seventy_.

But his Mom? She should have been around. Except, apparently, that Howard got her _murdered_. Surprisingly, he didn’t kill her drunk-driving, although Tony could see why old-him had believed that cover-up for so damn long, and fuck Captain Howard’s-Friend America for the resulting clusterfuck.

At least Friday explained the entire saga once she realized that ‘gently’ wasn’t going to happen.

“There’s nothing on him in the database,” Tony said quietly, straining his ears for the barely audible hum of one side of a conversation in the corridor.

 _Cellphones_ were awesome. People _lived_ in Star Trek. He couldn’t believe this all had happened in just thirty years – well, he could, because he was a futurist, but it was seriously awe-inspiring.

“No, Boss,” Friday replied just as quietly. “Should I initialize facial recognition?”

“…not unless you think he’s a threat.”

“He had the codes,” Friday pointed out uncertainly, asking for further input.

It was not like codes couldn’t be stolen. Or hacked. Even Friday could possibly be hacked, although Tony had trawled through her code and had to admit that she had some intimidating defenses. But Friday didn’t recognize Cupcake, and Tony couldn’t really imagine how the hell old-him acquired a toothy, spiky teenage guard-dog.

Cupcake made even less sense than Peter, who just had a plain old celebrity crush compounded with overdose of hero worship.

“Don’t,” he decided. “Not until he does something…”

“Incriminating?” Friday suggested.

Tony nodded. “Let’s go with that.” He stuffed his mouth full of pizza, chewed, and tried to think.

This gig was harder than he made it look. He was tired, and wanted to log out of this RPG. He wanted to pop down to the Jarvises, get fed a homecooked meal and nagged at by Ana, have a _real_ conversation with Edwin – just be somewhere he could relax for a second and _know_ that the people around him had his back.

But the Jarvises were gone, too.

Abruptly, Tone stood up. He grabbed another slice of pizza and left the rest for Cupcake, who without the hoodie turned out to be just as noodle-like as Tony. A bit bonier even, like he didn’t believe in junk-food padding. He crossed the hallway fast (pretending not to see Cupcake standing at one of the further-off windows and staring at night New York with a stony face while he listened to his Mom bitching him out). He let the door fall shut behind him this time, and dropped into the creaky swivel chair like an anvil.

“For what it’s worth,” Friday said, “I think your friend is angry at the situation, not at you, Boss.”

Tony absently nodded. Nice to know, but that wasn’t the problem. “Come on, Fry-girl.” He typed a string of characters on the keyboard – not that he needed a password when his A.I. guarded the access. “Let’s get back to work.”

He finally hit a stopping point about an hour later, when Friday informed him that the two Iron Man armors had landed and were safely stored in the garage. He went to check them out; tried to put one on, too, but it left him partially suspended by his armpits, cut off circulation to his arms and generally was uncomfortable. He saw about two thirds of the HUD, and even that only when he craned his neck.

He was tempted to start working on it immediately. Maybe he could bring down here the tools he could use and make a list of what else he’d need – that would carry him through to the daylight hours, and conveniently also solve the accommodations dilemma. And tomorrow he’d think of something else.

Or Cupcake would pack up and go back home. Maybe Tony would stumble in some time before noon and find the house empty again. Yeah, okay, that would be a solution-

“Go to sleep, Boss,” said Friday, and cut the power. The armor in front of Tony went inert.

“I’m too old for parental supervision,” Tony protested, “and you’re my _progeny_. I’m not taking this from you-”

“If your health is in danger, it will activate a protocol that automatically alerts Colonel Rhodey-”

“Okay, okay! Fine! Held hostage in my own house! Blackmailed into a kiddie curfew!” Granted, it was past two, but the indignation stood. Tony was emancipated, and he had the papers to prove it. Somewhere. Probably in the vault.

He trudged upstairs.

The bedroom was partially lit by Cupcake’s laptop, set up on the desk and showing off a screensaver sequence of pictures: the Sandia Lab’s Z machine; a detail of the Mandelbrot set; Lucy of the Discovery Program; a 2-D graph of an Hexeract; the Iron Man armor mid-disassembling with old-Tony’s profile partially visible; a close-up of a Van De Graaf generator-

Cupcake lay on his side, partially curled up. He did limit himself to less than half of the bed, but Tony still nudged him with his elbow on principle.

Cupcake woke up with a start, reflexively raising his forearm in a block in front of his face.

Tony wished he could take the nudge back. And briefly contemplated murder, but Cupcake looked like the kind of guy who didn’t need help if he wanted someone taken out. How he got that way… yeah, Tony could connect the dots.

“Did you seriously just climb into my bed?” Cupcake grumbled.

“It’s _my_ bed.”

Despite the burst of adrenaline, the guy sank right back into the pillow. He covered his eyes with his palm, exasperated or exhausted or just plain loath to have to see Tony’s face. “You’re so socially retarded.”

Tony pulled the blanket up over himself. There would be no hogging. “You must like me. At least a little.” He had to. He wouldn’t have come here otherwise. He wouldn’t have cared about _what happened to Tony Stark_. Right?

“It’s brain damage.” That wasn’t a no. “Shut up. I’m sleeping here.”

“Is this a good time to ask what’s your name?” Tony inquired, closing his eyes.

“Seriously?”

“Ow!” Tony hadn’t expected a pinch.

“How is that even a question? Can you get any lamer? How don’t you know?”

Yeah, there was no way Tony could sleep now. He sat up, since Cupcake leaning over him made him a little nervous. “There’s nothing on you on any of my servers. Even Friday didn’t know you. She recognized your entry codes, but not you. I mean, she’s probably found out who you are by now, but I thought I’d cut out the middle man and ask you.”

“…nothing?” Cupcake repeated, looking a bit like someone had pulled the rug from under him.

Tony shrugged. “ _Niente_.”

“Oh.”

And the guy was smart, like, genius smart – obviously – but Tony himself knew best how your brain failed you when the stupid emotion shit got in the way, so he tried to clear up at least the most glaring misconception. “I’ve got dossiers on _everybody_ , so methinks old-me went to serious fucking trouble to hide that you existed.”

“I…” Cupcake’s breath hitched. He turned away to hide his face in his bare knees, hands coming up to blinker him. “Shit.”

It honestly hadn’t occurred to Tony that someone – especially someone his age – could miss old-Tony this much. Actually prefer old-Tony to his younger and cooler version… okay, not cooler, because _billionaire superhero_ , but, hey, he was still awesome…

But this guy had come looking for his friend, and found instead a stranger that told him said friend was dead. _Shit on a stick_.

“Oh.”

Cupcake turned ever so slightly to side-glare at Tony with one eye, and then viciously punched him in the arm.

“Yeowch!” Tony flinched away and rubbed the future bruise. “ _Ye foule beaste_!”

“What’s that say about you?” Cupcake snarled.

“That I’ve got awesome taste in people,” Tony retorted, baring his teeth right back. He could see crystal clear that old-him _loved_ Cupcake, loved him enough to want him safe from his own stinking politics-heavy life – and too much to actually cut him off completely.

Tony knew the stray for a handful of hours, and he was already halfway there, too.

He went for Cupcake’s ribs, attacking fast enough that he didn’t get kneed in the jaw, and although Cupcake turned out not to be ticklish (disappointing, but yet another level-up in awesome) he was not so impervious to the other kind of touch. Tony pressed his palm to the warm skin, stroked down the concave belly to the jutting hipbones.

His mouth watered.

Cupcake sighed and, after a moment of indecision, gave in.

Tony shuffled closer, thumb finding the hollow of a hipbone and stroking in tiny circles, while his mouth went for Cupcake’s throat. The touching was all oddly soft – no biting, no bruises, but he went with his gut and let it be like that. This wasn’t like most people he fucked; this was someone who cared about him way more than Meredith or Ty, _way more_ than he ever thought anyone could. It was _arcane_ , but also great. He _knew_ he was sober-ish, but he _felt_ high.

Cupcake’s breath kept stuttering, and he _shivered_ under Tony’s hands. “You better make this worth my while, Tony.”

Nobody got that wrecked from a little petting unless they were a virgin.

He had not expected that. Cupcake was _stupidly_ hot. Scorching. There was no way he hadn’t been spoilt for choice – but he was also probably _stupidly_ picky, and Tony hadn’t known his ego could grow even bigger.

Tony kissed him – started out with the same weird softness that just _happened_ , and ended up clutching at his hair and sucking at his tongue. Cupcake was grabbing at his shoulders and catching up like the learning curve was his bitch.

“Get that off,” Cupcake ordered as soon as his mouth was free and he caught some breath. He pulled on Tony’s t-shirt, ineffectual, unable to focus. His (pretty) eyes were glazed over.

Tony knew he had to enjoy this while it lasted. Soon as he had a handle on it, Cupcake would once again show nothing but exactly what he wanted to display. This temporary loss of control was a unique pleasure for Tony’s enjoyment.

Grinning, Tony pulled the tee over his head and kicked off his pants, too. The next article of clothing that would have to go were Cupcake’s boxers – not that a bit of fabric stopped Tony from scoping up the prize.

“Good, babe?”

Cupcake hissed in displeasure.

Tony paused what he was doing and checked for what was wrong.

“H-harley,” Cupcake forced through clenched teeth. It was followed by a strangled moan, so Tony happily went back to putting his hands and mouth all over this nerd – just made a note to nix the ‘babe’. Now that he had a name, he could do so much better.

It was down to _Harley’s_ competitiveness rather than any particular skill that Tony didn’t manage to keep any semblance of control over what was happening. He had assumed – like an idiot – that Cupcake’s inexperience meant Tony would get to lead. Ha ha.

They basically had a very handsy grapple with kisses and orgasms. It was too much fun; Tony muffled his post-orgasmic giggle fit in Cupcake’s cum-streaked stomach, while Cupcake himself bitched him out in between trying to catch his breath, and then dislodged him. With prejudice.

Eventually both their breathing evened out. Tony watched the switching pictures of pretty science on Harley’s laptop. And thought, but that was inevitable.

The thing that kept bothering him was the softness.

They were both utter assholes – both knew it and enjoyed it and were proud of it. It was one of the main points of the attraction, along with the genius and, you know, the general hotness. They were both ready to throw down – Cupcake had walked in with _a gun_ aimed at Tony’s heart, for fuck’s sake, and Tony _was_ deep inside made of iron the way Howard had wanted him to be. Iron Man. Q.E.D. They traded insults and sarcasm like being little shits was going out of fashion. Cupcake scratched.

So why the hell was it so goddamn _soft_?

“Are you seriously psychoanalyzing yourself right now?” Cupcake snapped.

Tony startled. “I thought you were asleep.”

Cupcake – _Harley_ – scoffed. “Right. As soon as the buzzing stops. How do you get down from this?”

Tony couldn’t help it. He grinned, moved closer, wound his arm around Cupcake’s torso and – despite (token) protests – pulled them together tight. He mouthed at the shoulder in front of his face. “I don’t. I continue until I pass out from exhaustion, or I get up and have an engineering binge. It’s better than crack, sometimes.”

Depending on how high was the high. And right now it was about sky-high, and he didn’t get the why, but he wasn’t so stupid that he didn’t understand it had something to do with the _softness_.

“Get oooff,” Cupcake grumbled, and buried his face in the pillow.

“I’d rather get _you_ off,” Tony returned, pushing his cock against the back of Cupcake’s thigh.

“You _didn’t_. Just when I thought you couldn’t get any lamer-”

He cut himself off with the little whimper escaping through clenched teeth, which probably had a lot to do with Tony’s hand relocating from his stomach to his balls. What? Genius needed to play, right? _The more complex the mind_ and all that.

“This is so depraved,” Harley complained, but for all the bitching he just made himself more comfortable and enjoyed Tony’s ministrations.

Tony took to it with the seriousness this endeavor deserved. He wanted to, oh so badly, but he absolutely was _not_ going to spit-fuck a virgin. No way, no how. Nope. Even aside from the _softness_ thing. So that meant he had to keep Harley interested, make him want to come back for more, tomorrow and the next day (after the supply run). This was too little – he needed it all, like burning.

That mop of hair, _fucking muppet_ , random curls here and there and the strands plastered to his face and neck with sweat, goddamnit, Tony needed that sight in his life for, like, _months_ to come. At least. He had to get his hands into that hair, but not right now – right now he was going to go down on Cupcake’s cock, so his hands were busy elsewhere.

The second orgasm put Harley right out of commission, and even Tony managed to lull himself to sleep with brainstorming about the armors’ adjustments some time still before dawn.

He woke up alone in the bed, but the sound of running water tipped him off about Cupcake’s – _Harley’s_ , he reminded himself – location. He rolled over, discovering a little too late that the wet spot was now the dry and scratchy spot, but that didn’t deter him from going through his wake-up routine. Cap off, tilt. A finger-dip stopped him from spilling; he didn’t even have to open his eyes.

He knocked it back.

“Did you seriously just start your day with a shot of vodka?”

Tony opened his eyes and found Harley standing in the bathroom door, still shower-damp and – tragically – dressed. He put the shot glass on top of his bedside and raised his eyebrows. “Problem?”

Harley’s eyes went hot-angry for a moment, and then the cold mask slammed down over his face again. He shrugged, like the point didn’t matter, like the topic didn’t even merit his attention, and sauntered out.

Tony had been punched in the stomach and felt less winded.

What… what just happened?

He scrambled up and after Harley, but barely a few steps from the bed he realized he had no idea what he was doing. Was he going to apologize? For what? Living his life? Whose business was it anyway if he chose to destroy his liver? That was his goddamn prerogative!

It wasn’t like anybody cared!

It wasn’t… Oh. But it… but it was. Maybe?

He spun on his heel and faced the bottle. It stood, innocuous, at the foot of the bed. It wasn’t even doing anything, it was just there. And Tony hadn’t drunk enough to compromise any of his faculties, just a little bit to relax so he could get to work. He had a lot of work. He had done this every day for the past two months or so, ever since Rhodey took off for West Point (and stopped taking Tony’s calls). Nobody had a problem with it-

Granted, nobody was around. And if they were, they were busy picking their clothes off the floor to get their walk of shame over with.

“Should I… Friday, should I apologize?” The question was out before he could second guess himself.

“I don’t think so?” Friday hazarded. “You haven’t offended or hurt Harley, so I don’t see why you should apologize…? Or, Boss, is this a _relationship_ thing?”

Apologizing without knowing what for to keep the peace and quiet – that was totally a relationship thing. Tony wouldn’t do that, though. And Harley was three times too smart to fall for that crap. Tony would have to legitimately apologize for even trying something phony like that – _that_ would have been an insult.

“I could offer to quit?” Tony suggested. Did he want to quit? He liked his booze. It was cold comfort, but way better than no comfort at all. And why should this rando who barged into his life yesterday matter enough for Tony to give up his medication?

He ambled to the bathroom, feeling so off balance that he had to be careful not to slip on the wet tiles, and it took him a minute to notice the face his reflection in the mirror was making. He grimaced.

By the time Harley came back (not that Tony doubted he would come back – well, not after he had noticed that Harley had left behind his laptop) with his backpack full of groceries, Tony hadn’t had another shot, but also hadn’t made any decisions. He accepted a plastic bowl full of fruit salad as his penance, and didn’t protest the dose of deadly vitamins. There was a silent point made somewhere in there – Tony didn’t have a leg to stand on protesting vitamins when he drank ethanol for breakfast.

Harley was done with his own breakfast – a sub of some sort, which Tony eyed longingly – before he spoke. “The Mechanic didn’t really quit until after the palladium poisoning. Still relapsed sometimes, between the panic attacks and people betraying him like it was an Olympic sport.”

Now Tony was glad he didn’t have those memories.

“He couldn’t talk to people about it – any of it. But. He said I wasn’t people.”

Oh.

“And it’s not like it was something special. He’d call sometimes, bitch about shit, I’d tell him to stop whining and get off his ass…” He swallowed.

Tony made a move to reach out, but reconsidered. Harley looked about as receptive as a porcelain insulator. He probably just wanted to be told to _stop whining and get off his ass_.

“Why was I supposed to meet you?” Tony asked instead.

“You weren’t.” Cupcake flung that short sentence like an accusation.

“You said-”

“I had a meeting with _the Mechanic_ , not with _you_.”

“Ouch.” It shouldn’t have stung, but it did.

“We’ve established you’re not him.”

“Except- yeah. Yeah, no _except_. I’m not him.” Tony had, actually, contrary to popular belief, noticed that he wasn’t a nearly-retired superhero that had once flipped off the U.S. Senate (boy, were his balls going to grow huge) and nuked an alien army. Falling short in comparison to himself was a new experience, and he didn’t enjoy it any more than waxing (he wasn’t admitting to how that incident happened, there had been a bet involved and that was all he had to say about it).

It was just that aside from the cute-but-slightly-rabid fan Peter, Harley was the only person he had.

Of course a rejection would sting.

“So,” he concluded with a plastic smile, “you’re not going to tell me.” What kind of a moron was he to entertain a hope? He deserved this.

He tapped at the keyboard to pull up _the Mechanic’s_ notes on the armors he had downstairs.

Harley was quiet for a long while. He used the time to put away the rest of his haul – some into the drawers, some into the fridge to keep the coke cans company, and a candy necklace straight onto his neck. He pulled the elastic to his mouth and crushed one sugar bead between his teeth. Then, finally, he said: “Not on the first date.”

Tony pulled himself out of a contemplation of the schematics Friday was projecting for him. “Fine by me. Second? Third? I think third’s supposed to be traditional – I’m almost sure Rhodey said something like that when he was bitching at me about… whatever.”

“About you fucking everything in sight?” Cupcake suggested sourly.

“Fuck you.” Tony didn’t do _unfaithful_ , he just didn’t often have something to be faithful to. Besides, ‘everything’? Really? “I have an excellent taste in people, and also a passing familiarity with law, if not ethics-”

“What you _don’t have_ are exclusive rights to hyperbole.”

That stopped Tony short. The swivel chair creaked as he twisted his upper body to make a ‘what the?’ face at Cupcake. Was he missing a reference again? “Um. Hyperbola. Conic. Context?” He waved his arms to illustrate how lost he was.

“Boss,” Friday chimed in, “a hyperbole also means a figure of speech when you exaggerate something for effect.”

“I _hyperbole_ all the time?” Tony paraphrased. “Whoa. Am I getting arbitrarily close-”

“To getting punched in the face at any point in time?” Friday suggested cheerfully. “Sounds likely, Boss.”

Right, yes, they weren’t discussing geometry. Tony was being called out on his promiscuity. Which wasn’t nearly as dramatic as old-Tony’s, and if he couldn’t claim the good stuff old-him did, he sure as fuck wasn’t accepting the blame for the not-good shit. “I don’t fuck _everything_ in sight. I never did. And just because I’m easy doesn’t mean I’m loose. Um. That didn’t come out right. I mean-”

“I _know_ what you mean,” Cupcake shut him down.

He might have, too.

Tony didn’t do anything he was ashamed of – couldn’t afford to, really, with the paps hounding him, although to the unending chagrin of his parents he solved that equation by giving up shame rather than giving up fun – but if Harley was feeling buyer’s remorse, Tony might just succumb to actual regret. Was there any way to salvage the friendship? Why did people let sex mess everything up?

“I like getting with people. That doesn’t make me…” He waved his arm to indicate what it didn’t make him, which wasn’t very specific, but the best word he could think of was ‘cheater’, and that sounded so Danielle Steel. His two attempts at a relationship so far had been resounding failures, sure; it still didn’t make him the bad guy. So what if he chose to have a bunch of one-night-stands over another disappointment?

“Just because you’re not him doesn’t mean you can’t be _like_ him,” Harley said eventually, slow and grating like it physically pained him to have to suspend the sarcasm for five seconds.

And he was – he was right. And sort of encouraging on top of that.

Tony’s stomach clenched.

He had _proved_ that he could be the person old-him was, but it was still beyond weird to meet someone who had faith in him.

Not that _Peter_ didn’t have faith in him, but Tony had a sneaky suspicion that _Peter_ was in the throes of infatuation and didn’t have any idea about _what_ Tony was under the shiny surface. Harley, on the other hand, understood Tony well enough to deconstruct him on the fly. The ass.

Given the encouragement, Tony didn’t waste another moment before he sprang up and tried to cozy up to Cupcake. That didn’t go so well – the rebuff he received was just this side of cold. Lesson learned: as opposed to the evidence of last night, when Harley felt off balance, he didn’t want to be touched, much less comforted with physical contact.

Tony had a suspicion that it was learned behavior rather than natural preference, but he wasn’t touching that one before they had at least a joint account.

He watched as Harley pulled the top part of his hair back (the man _nub_ wasn’t any less funny than yesterday) and knelt down to search through the drawers for whatever Tony kept there. Which was mostly tools, hardware fasteners, coils of wiring, chocolate bars and firearms in various stages of completeness. And that one bottle of vodka.

Tony had fully expected Harley to either say something about the booze or try to take it away (he would have let him, probably – he had conceded more important things to keep less important friendships), but Harley just reached into the front pocket of his hoodie, pulled out several sealed bags of what at a glance looked like dried fruit – bleh, vitamins – and stuffed them into the drawer so that they would have to be taken out first if Tony wanted to get to the bottle.

That was… an interesting strategy.

“Blueberries,” Harley non-explained. “The Mechanic’s favorite. You didn’t have any here.” He didn’t say it, but there was a ‘thought you might like them’ vibe there. That was – really nice.

Tony wasn’t sure how to respond to someone going out of their way to do something nice for him without an ulterior motive. Although, maybe he was underestimating Cupcake. Maybe there was a dastardly ulterior motive. At the very least this fruit contained those vitamins.

He would have to figure it out. Speaking of.

“When do you have to be back in Cambridge?”

“Why? Need a live-in maid?”

Tony snorted. He probably did, too. And a cook. He could survive on poor-student food almost indefinitely, but he didn’t _want to_. What was the point of being a billionaire if he couldn’t get a fantastic steak once in a while? Maybe some goulash like Ana did? Or, rather, _used to do_.

“Next Tuesday,” Harley relented. “I didn’t expect it would be this easy to find you.”

Tony blinked. That was – that was a week and two days, and even if he subtracted one day for travelling, it was still more than a week that Harley had just volunteered to spend with him. He could have said ‘tomorrow’, and Tony wouldn’t have known any better.

“I’ve never been to New York, so I’m seeing the sights while I’m here.” He stood up and brushed the floor detritus from his knees. His eyes bore into Tony. “I shelled out of breakfast. You’re springing for the touristy stuff, Mr Billionaire.”

Tony would have done that without being asked. It was how he rolled. Not that he especially wanted to suffer through the so-called ‘attractions’, but he wasn’t going to leave Cupcake to do it all alone. Besides, he had never done any of it himself. And he was a little curious about the Coney Island.

“I’ve got some cash, but that’s for legit emergencies,” he mentioned. It meant using a credit card, and that in turn meant that people would know where he was and what he was doing. At least touring the Big Apple wasn’t anything scandalous.

“Your people are just humoring you, anyway.” Devastating bluntness was just one of the services Harley offered. Another were emphatic eyerolls. “Look into Rhodes, monkey-brain. When you went missing in Afghanistan he searched for you for three months. I don’t believe for a second that he would just ignore you randomly disappearing.”

“Friday, did you snitch on me?”

“Boss, Miss Pepper and Colonel Rhodey both have emergency overrides that can access your coordinates and vitals if the data exists. They don’t have to go through me.”

Harley’s expression said something along the lines of ‘well, what did you expect?’, and Tony retroactively disbelieved the dismissal of old-Tony’s and Harley’s phone-calls. Cupcake knew more about old-Tony’s systems and protocols and relationships than Tony himself, and seemed to have a better handle on what was relevant than Friday.

That was some serious inside scoop.

“That would have been nice to know,” Tony said dryly, and shelved away the realization that his friend with benefits was originally groomed to be his heir.

“So, you’re a dick to all your friends equally. Excuse me while I feign surprise.”

“I don’t know any of my so-called friends, Cupcake,” Tony reminded him, rising to his feet. _Harley_ knew more about who from what was left of old-Tony’s circle was at least somewhat trustworthy. “Literally the only still living person I know is Rhodey, and last I remember he stopped talking to me over some money-related crap. Or maybe Air Force-related crap. Or drugs-related crap. I don’t have a damn clue.” There was so much in Tony’s life that Rhodey had a problem with, it was hard to find anything he approved of. “Am I supposed to just call him and go _hi, honey, if you’re not mad at me anymore, would you drop by Park Ave for movies and popcorn? Maybe discuss some existentiality? Time-travel paradoxes and such? Fucking magic_?!”

“You have no idea what happened to you.” Harley snuck in under Tony’s guard and pushed him up against the nearest wall.

He made it look like attack, when in fact it was, undeniably, a hug.

Tony didn’t manage to relax into it entirely, but there was the familiar burning behind the bridge of his nose. He let his forehead thunk down onto Harley’s shoulder. He could do this, maybe? He just needed someone to lean on for a while. And Harley – Harley could maybe take it?

More than that, though. Harley _offered_.

“You’re not the Mechanic,” Cupcake stated almost matter-of-factly, except for the tinge of plaintiveness in his voice.

Tony shook his head, forehead rubbing over the soft material of the hoodie. “No. I’m just me.” His arms came, tentatively, up to wrap around Harley’s waist.

“Okay.”

“Okay?”

“Stop fishing, Rip Van Winkle,” Harley grumbled into his hair. “You’re a shitty fisherman.”

Tony kissed him; for all his poise, Cupcake totally invested himself into it. By today’s performance nobody could even guess that he had been a complete noob yesterday.

“You wanna go again?” Tony asked; they stood close enough that both could tell the other one was up for it.

“You want to go _steady_?” Harley retorted, all mocking and bite and challenge.

“Yeah?” Was Tony supposed to be embarrassed by that? Was ‘going steady’ not done by tough guys in this century? “What, is that a problem?”

Even though he knew it was. It was a lot of problems, and Harley deserved way better than getting weighed down by somebody else’s baggage just as his own life was taking off. Tony wasn’t even sure what he was going to do about his legal identity, much less how he could swing dating someone without some sort of media and/or supervillain backlash.

He finally got that the meme with the ‘if anything happened to him I would kill everyone in this room and then myself’ wasn’t really funny.

Even though there wasn’t anyone else in _this_ particular room… but Tony honestly didn’t think the room in question would matter. He could do the Grand Central Station at rush hour just as easily. When he was thirteen he had designed a bomb that could have pulverized a couple of blocks. Ker-plunk – _boom_.

Obie had been impressed.

“I’m in Cambridge most of the time,” Harley said, and that was the last complaint that would have even occurred to Tony. “I’ll probably graduate in a year or so – yak it up, asshole, not everyone can graduate at fifteen.”

Tony was pretty sure that Harley could have… if he had entirely given up on having a life. Tony had never had much of a life outside of the dog-and-pony shows for the Stark Industries and then, at college, the partying, so it wasn’t like he had missed out. If that was all you had to focus on, it wasn’t that hard to get two PhDs by seventeen.

Harley had a Mom. He probably had an actual family that treated him like a person instead of legacy.

Tony crunched two beads of Cupcake’s candy necklace between his teeth, and licked up the shards of processed sugar, seasoned with boysweat. He didn’t even get threatened in retaliation. Maybe, if he convinced Cupcake to go steady, Tony would get his own candy necklace? He had _ideas_ for what could be done with it. Creative ones.

“Friday brought a couple of older armors from the Avengers Compound,” he offered. “Help me adapt them?” He had to study some more before he got anywhere near the level of scientific advancement required for the newest armors. What were those even? Nanotech? _Magic_?!

“You want to give one to _me_?”

“Do we have time for you to make your own from scratch?” Tony countered. A week wasn’t enough, not if they had to source the material and either build fabricating units or somehow use the ones in one of old-Tony’s workshops.

“Missing the point.”

“Am I?” Tony figured that as heir not-apparent, Harley had access to a bunch of proprietary information, and was up to speed on the armor designs. At least the ones that didn’t seem like straight-up magic. “You’re going to tell me you couldn’t?”

“I’m telling you,” Cupcake snapped, “that maybe my life’s ambition _isn’t_ to fly around in a quarter-ton of metal and fight terrorists. Or aliens. _Alien terrorists_.”

Um. So, it turned out that Tony _was_ missing the point after all. “I… didn’t think it was…?”

“You’re an idiot. Giving me one of those things won’t make me _safe_.”

Right. Anyone even got a wind of one of those armors being somewhere undefended, and every two-bit villain would converge on the location. They would come for the tech, and then Harley would inevitably _have to_ fight.

“I know,” he admitted. He just didn’t want to let Harley go. But maybe he had to. Maybe it was the right thing to do and, contrary to all expectations, Tony Stark grew into the kind of person that did the right thing.

Harley rolled his eyes. “How can you off-handedly assume that I have the knowhow and skill to build an actual goddam Iron Man suit one moment, and then not trust me to take care of my own ass the next?” The glove and the gun combo were a proof of that. It was too low-tech to be interesting to any of the major players, and yet in an emergency Harley had weapons he knew how to use well. “Could you just for a moment entertain the idea that _maybe_ the safest hands in the world are _not your own_?”

Tony didn’t recognize the reference, but he understood the sentiment. He was being called an overprotective control freak. Oh, was this what Rhodey had been so pissed about? Why didn’t he just say so?

Harley had no problem explaining that in _English_.

“So, help me adapt _one_ of the armors,” Tony amended. “I looked at the specs. It’s high-hypersonic – I could be in Boston in, like three minutes accounting for acceleration and deceleration-”

“Fine!”

“-on one condition.”

Harley sighed and with great, painful effort forced himself to look at Tony again. His expression informed the world that he was _so done_. “What now?”

“Don’t shut me out. We _are_ going steady, and that means if you need something – from a plane ticket to your own personal workshop built under your dorm building – you tell me. What’s the point of dating a billionaire otherwise?”

“Are you even a billionaire? How are you going to claim your own stuff without a legal identity?”

“I’ll call Potts.” He didn’t think Harley would dump him if he were suddenly poor – not that he would be poor for long, not with his brain – but not having money just sounded too damn inconvenient. And maybe he had been trying to avoid contacting any of old-Tony’s associates… wait a minute…

He glared at his asshole of a boyfriend. “Did you just con me?”

Harley shrugged one shoulder. “Cry about it.”

“Real men don’t cry,” Tony parroted Howard.

Harley laughed into his face. Or, more like, into his hair. Oh, right, he apparently ‘wasn’t people’, and that now allegedly included having witnessed old-Tony snivel about his fucked-up life. Tony got stranded _alone_ in the middle of the fucking future, with the only one around being an A.I. that was still learning how to be a person, and he _hadn’t cried_ about it.

…he wondered how long he could stave it off.

Not long at all – not if Cupcake kept clasping the back of Tony’s neck like that.

Tony hooked a foot and an arm around the guy to keep him in place, and dialed the ‘Pepper <3’ contact saved on his phone. It barely started ringing before it was picked up.

“Tony? Finally! I’ve been going out of my mind! I need you to make an appearance in public _yesterday_ and…” There was a pause. “Tony?” The woman on the other side of the line sounded genuinely distressed.

Tony took a deep breath, leaned onto the shoulder in front of him both metaphorically and physically, and spoke: “Hi, Miss Potts. So, funny story…”

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings: explicit sexual situations, unsafe sex, underage (just to err on the safe side; they’re both 17, so they’re perfectly legal where they are), implied violence and betrayal and… basically background CA:CW, implied child abuse and neglect, de-aging (with corresponding loss of memory) and the resulting relationship weirdness, but no actual cross-gen, unrealistic love story, loss and grief, alcohol abuse, very bad language, unreliable narrator
> 
>  
> 
> I might, _might_ write more of this. Depending on things, and also stuff. Because I really, _really_ love these two.
> 
> Also, if Harley ever meets Steve, he will _fuck him up_.


End file.
